Girls
by Cacoethic
Summary: "I don't have a problem with them," I'm telling Sakura as we walk alongside each other. "I mean, there's a girl I like, and she probably likes a boy. Are either of us wrong?"


"I don't have a problem with them," I'm telling Sakura as we walk alongside each other. "I mean, there's a girl I like, and she probably likes a boy. Are either of us wrong? You can't help who you like… y'know?" She is looking at me with bewilderment, but it isn't until she opens her mouth that I realize she caught my mistake.

"You like _girls_?" Sakura questions disbelievingly, not with any obvious disgust but certainly with surprise. I flush, and for a moment time becomes fluid, slowly creeping on as my heart rates increases dangerously. I shake my head before any words come out.

"No, Sakura! We're talking hypotheticals, duh," I force a laugh, unaware if it's been a few seconds or a few hours since her initial inquiry. She laughs, and I allow myself to breathe a sigh of relief. I'm off the hook. She walks on, leading me through the park by my house. I know the way- after all, who does she think proposed the walk, whose park is it anyway? But it is my head bowed following her along the winding sidewalks, past the jungle gym and abandoned park benches. My heartbeat is still irregular as I pretend to be undisturbed when she calls over her shoulder that she was "just messing with me".

Sakura is my childhood friend. In her mind, we both pined after the same guy and had a falling-out over who mattered more: friends or lovers. In her mind, once we were no longer fighting over Sasuke, we could go back to being friends. She had no way of knowing that my feelings for Sasuke were imaginary. She couldn't know that even as a child, I was always watching her. I acted confident and encouraging while hiding behind a shield of affection for a boy I could barely stand. I never liked the brooding, moody type. It was always her.

In truth, Sasuke was only a convenient excuse. I knew Sakura liked him, and used that to get closer to her. I knew there was something wrong with me, even when I was younger. I never felt interested in boys, dreaming of Sailor Jupiter rather than Tuxedo Mask. When I realized that Sakura was normal and I was not, I hid behind a fabricated crush for Sasuke. I separated myself from the girl I had obsessed over for ages in order to protect her from my affection. It seems like a rather mature decision looking back, but of course it was childish. Ino, who always knew what to do. Ino, who led Sakura out of her shell and made her into a beautiful young woman. Ino, who cried after they stopped talking but couldn't tell her mother what was wrong. I felt disgusting for years. I wanted to pretend I was normal, which had always been impossible with Sakura around. After she left, everything seemed to fall in to place.

Boyfriends walked in and out of my life, and I watched them come and go rather unceremoniously. Being known as a "frigid bitch" was kind of my thing, which boys quickly realized was not just a nickname. I'm pretty, beautiful some might say, but I have no interest in you beyond how big your wallet is. I cultivated an image of an untouchable ice queen, who was doing just fine at the top of the totem pole. Of course, this all changed when Sakura decided, unannounced, to tumble back into my life.

We never discussed Sasuke, but I suppose it was obvious I was "over" him after aforementioned relationships. Her feelings on the dark-haired boy were well-concealed, and I was too much of a coward to enquire. So she approached me without warning, and we continued on as though nothing had happened. The exception was that this time, I was following after her.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with it, by the way," Sakura was assuring me. I snapped back to reality. We were on the swings. She was staring at me intently, waiting for recognition of her words to reach me. What she got wasn't satisfactory, so she held out a hand in front of my face. "Hello?" she laughed, waving her hand around lazily. Closing my mouth and swallowing, hard, I nodded. Everything was back to normal.

The entire conversation had been orchestrated by me, Ino, the social mastermind. I brought up some famous lesbian couple and then _accidentally _let it slip that I was not too straight myself. It was all a charade, put on by yours truly with the hopes of gauging Sakura's reaction and then maybe I'd come out to her (but definitely not confess!) before going home and drowning in ice cream, convincing myself that this much was enough. Swinging absentmindedly, my feet brushed against the ground as I turned to face Sakura. She looked at me expectantly, ready for another conversation topic. I had always been so eager to offer them up. This time, I said nothing.

"Remember when I cut my hair? We were so young," Sakura began speaking, her head downturned, staring down at the pebbles beneath us. I nodded and she continued, although she couldn't possibly have seen the gesture. "You helped me fix it. That was so nice, helping me out even though we were _love rivals_," she smiled at the pebbles, remembering more innocent times. My throat went dry.

"Yeah," I replied slowly, measuring my words as they escaped from me. "We were pretty stupid, huh? Getting so competitive over a dumb guy," my voice was breaking. This is enough, I told myself over and over again. It's enough to be here with Sakura, in this park, swinging, side-by-side. I don't need to see her face when she is proposed to, her face when she orgasms, her face when her husband comes home to her every night. She didn't need me to mess up her life with my fucked-up feelings. I felt like throwing up. I tried imagining Sakura saying "That's disgusting," looking at me with anger and betrayal in her eyes. I wanted her to hate me. But of course, that hadn't worked last time. There was no guarantee it would work now that she was older and wiser. Sakura's voice cut through the cloud of self-pity surrounding me.

"Ino," her voice was calm but on the edge of alarm. "Are you alright?" It was only then that I noticed the tears rolling down my face. Humiliating. Sakura was looking right at me. I felt like I was floating above the scene, an innocent bystander watching two girls chat on a warm summer day.

"I'm sorry," I could hear myself saying, far off. She leaned in closer, as though she hadn't quite heard me. Before she could ask anything, my legs snapped up and I was gone. I didn't look back. It helped that I had run track in middle school. I wonder what the girls at school would think, knowing they'd had a _lesbian _in the _locker room_. That thought kept me going. I didn't need to be judged. I didn't need to feel disapproval, not from anyone.

"What the hell?" Sakura was yelling. She had stood up from the swings. I could hear her feet slowly crunch through the gravel, but I had taken off. She didn't follow. "Ino! What the fuck?" she kept yelling, but I wasn't turning around for anything.

At home, I ran a bath. It was just me. I guess it was pretty lucky I'd gotten a single-bedroom apartment at such a low rate, but most times it was pretty lonely. My landlady was reclusive, yet another thing most people would consider lucky. But me, I'm a social creature. Going out, dating boys who barely hold my interest, attending parties all with the hopes of becoming _normal_. As the sound of my door slamming behind me echoed throughout the empty apartment, however, normalcy seemed completely out of reach. At least the bathroom had a nice tub. I'd had many a sulky soak with the aid of lavender bath salts and a tub of Ben & Jerrys. Unfortunately there was no ice cream this time. Just me. I set my cell phone down next to the tub as the water ran. Picked it back up. Silenced it. Set it back down. Picked it up again. NO MISSED CALLS, the screen assured me. Satisfied with the level of water in the tub, I dipped my feet in and dialed Shikamaru's number. Three rings. Typical.

"Yo," came a familiar voice on the other end of the line.

"Shika?" I asked, knowing the answer but at an abrupt loss of words.

"Who else?" he chuckled. I took a deep breath.

"I'm gay," now he was really laughing. "Hey, shut up! I'm being serious. I'm a lesbian. I like girls," I was saying angrily, as though it was his fault that I was fucked up like this. His smirk was audible. I hated that about him, his smug attitude. But it seemed appropriate now.

"I know," he professed willingly. "Sakura, right?" I hung up. Dropped the phone on the rug next to me. In the tub and under the water in record time. Baths are an excellent place to sulk. I idly washed myself before picking my phone up again nervously. 1 MISSED CALL. Shikamaru. That was surprising. Not bothering to dry my hair, I held the phone up close to my ear and dialed him back.

"Ino," he started before I could say hello, or more appropriately, "what the hell". He sounded exasperated. "I was joking," he explained. "I thought you were fucking with me, you know, like when you decided to become vegan for a week in middle school?"

"We aren't in middle school anymore Shikamaru," I replied melancholically. We sighed simultaneously.

"Okay, maybe I sort of thought you were serious. I mean, you can be kind of obvious you know?" he seemed more playful now. Shikamaru never took anything seriously for longer than he had to. "So… have you told her yet?"

"No!" my mouth replied before my brain could process the question fully. "I mean, I was going to tell her about the whole… gay thing. But not about my crush. No way. Never," I insisted, although it was more for my own benefit than his. Shikamaru was quiet for what seemed like an eternity. I refused to prompt him, so we sat in silence until he finally spoke.

"I think you should, Ino. You might be surprised," he said knowingly. Smirking out loud. Before I could reply, he ended the call. I got out of the tub before becoming I became a prune. Autopilot commenced as I made my way to the room, drying off half-heartedly and putting on pajamas. It was an indoor kind of day, where you order takeout and don't feel guilty because calories don't count when you've had a shitty day. I did just that.

While waiting for my food, I mulled over the past few years of my life. I had convinced myself that life had been just peachy sans Sakura, because I was able to somewhat hide my desires for the opposite sex. But of course it wouldn't change the fact that those desires existed. It also didn't change the fact that I had pined for an almost-certainly straight girl for so long. It was suffocating at times, watching her from afar and knowing that my feelings weren't changing. Things don't work out the way you want them too, I guess.

The doorbell rang and I rose shakily. The whole day made me feel out of balance, unsteady, sort of like I'd had the wind knocked out of me. Grabbing my wallet, I opened the door lazily and was greeted by not an apathetic delivery boy, but Sakura. I should've known it was too soon. I shut the door immediately, on instinct.

"Hey, c'mon," Sakura spoke quietly from the other side of the door. "I don't know what I did wrong," she was pleading. I reddened at this, realizing how far I'd pulled her into my melodrama. Loosening my grip on the door handle, I took a step away from the wooden frame. Hearing me move, Sakura cautiously pushed the door open. She was in front of me again. I felt an urge to retreat but my feet did not obey. Seeing my hesitance, she spoke up once more "Ino, were you… telling the truth?"

"What do you mean?" I tried to ask innocently, but my voice was shaking. Sakura looked at me wordlessly and I felt the words spilling out of me before I could quiet myself. "Do I like girls?" I began unsteadily. "I can't really say. I've only ever liked you." Rather than retreat from my words, however, they made me feel stronger. I looked Sakura square in the eyes, the truth finally hanging in the air above us. Once I'd released my secret I felt lighter, even a bit euphoric. Sakura's eyebrows raised but rather than frown, she seemed to be smirking.

"You idiot," she was saying, moving towards me. Bridging the gap between us with a kiss, Sakura leaned in as her lips touched to mine. We broke apart almost immediately and she whispered "I like you too," before pulling me closer. All at once there was warmth, acceptance, kindness, and love coursing through my veins; the feeling is indescribable. I felt at home.


End file.
